The promise is leverage: brief, high-intent sessions. You bring the question, the tool brings the synthesis, and you leave with more than you arrived with. That is the value proposition.
Here is what often happens
We’ve spent the last couple of years treating generative AI like a vending machine. Select a task. Insert a prompt. Retrieve a product. And to be fair, in many legal and professional contexts that’s exactly the right frame: accuracy and precision matter and “creative” output in payroll or billing codes is usually just a polished
I had a long session recently with a public genAI tool that taught me something more important than the topic I started with.
The lesson was not about whether the model was “smart enough.” It was about control. At a certain point, I realized I was no longer simply prompting an LLM. I was negotiating
I have just posted a trio of new research white papers to SSRN. These represent the latest output from the Kennedy Idea Propulsion Laboratory and the culmination of my work over the last month to move AI beyond “utilitarian drift.” This is the cycle of incremental efficiency gains that ultimately generates no transformative insight.
At the end of a long, technical AI session this week, something became clear to me: human-in-the-loop is being misunderstood in ways that matter.
The issue wasn’t whether the system could generate outputs quickly
In 1980, I wrote a senior thesis paper called “Imagination: A Romantic Ideal.” My investigation then was a critique of the German and English Romantics who, in their zeal to undo the “damage” of Enlightenment Reason, merely erected a new idol: The Imagination.
Through a concrete analysis of Keats and Poe, I discovered a truth
This paper has been published and and a PDF of it is available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5397903
By Dennis Kennedy
August 19, 2025
Kennedy Idea Propulsion Laboratory Working Paper No. 2025-01
License: This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
After a truly rewarding run, I am concluding my service as the Director of the Center for Law, Technology & Innovation at Michigan State University College of Law.
It has been an immense privilege to work with so many brilliant students, dedicated faculty, and professional colleagues. I am incredibly proud of what we built together
We often talk about starting new projects, brainstorming innovative ideas, and maximizing our billable hours. But what about the silent drain on our productivity? I’m talking about the multitude of unfinished tasks, lingering commitments, and half-completed initiatives that clutter our minds and sap our energy.
In the latest issue of my newsletter, Personal Strategy
If you are a high-achieving professional, you live with a fundamental tension. You know that deep, strategic thinking is the engine of your success, yet your calendar is a fortress that rarely permits the quiet time required for it. Important decisions loom, but the sheer complexity of your options leads to the all-too-familiar state of
